The United NationsConvention on the Rights of the Child (commonly abbreviated as the CRC, CROC, or UNCRC) is a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. The Convention defines a child as any human being under the age of eighteen, unless the age of majority is attained earlier under a state's own domestic legislation.[5]

Governments of countries that have ratified the Convention are required to report to, and appear before, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child periodically to be examined on their progress with regards to the advancement of the implementation of the Convention and the status of child rights in their country. Their reports and the committee's written views and concerns are available on the committee's website.

The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention and opened it for signature on 20 November 1989 (the 30th anniversary of its Declaration of the Rights of the Child).[7] It came into force on 2 September 1990, after it was ratified by the required number of nations. Currently, 194 countries are party to it,[1] including every member of the United Nations except Somalia, South Sudan and the United States.[6][8][9] In Somalia, parliamentary approval and presidential assent of the ratification act was obtained "without the articles of 14, 20 and 21 due to Somali culture, religion and the provisional constitution."[10][3][11] On 20 January 2015, Somalia ratified the convention and the process will be finalized once the Government of Somalia deposits the instrument of ratification at UN Headquarters in New York. South Sudan has started its domestic process to become a party to the treaty.[12]

The Convention deals with the child-specific needs and rights. It requires that states act in the best interests of the child. This approach is different from the common law approach found in many countries that had previously treated children as possessions or chattels, ownership of which was sometimes argued over in family disputes.[citation needed]

In many jurisdictions, properly implementing the Convention requires an overhaul of child custody and guardianship laws, or, at the very least, a creative approach within the existing laws.[citation needed] The Convention acknowledges that every child has certain basic rights, including the right to life, his or her own name and identity, to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping, and to have a relationship with both parents, even if they are separated.

The Convention obliges states to allow parents to exercise their parental responsibilities. The Convention also acknowledges that children have the right to express their opinions and to have those opinions heard and acted upon when appropriate, to be protected from abuse or exploitation, and to have their privacy protected, and it requires that their lives not be subject to excessive interference.

The Convention also obliges signatory states to provide separate legal representation for a child in any judicial dispute concerning their care and asks that the child's viewpoint be heard in such cases.

The Convention forbids capital punishment for children. In its General Comment 8 (2006) the Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that there was an "obligation of all state parties to move quickly to prohibit and eliminate all corporal punishment and all other cruel or degrading forms of punishment of children".[16] Article 19 of the Convention states that state parties must "take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence",[17] but it makes no explicit reference to corporal punishment. The Committee's interpretation of this section to encompass a prohibition on corporal punishment has been rejected by several state parties to the Convention, including Australia,[18] Canada and the United Kingdom.

Currently 194 countries have are parties to the treaty (some with stated reservations or interpretations) including every member of the United Nations except Somalia, South Sudan and the United States.[6][8] The United States has signed the document but has not ratified it.[20] The Parliament of South Sudan enacted a bill to ratify the Convention in 2013, but the bill requires the president's signature to become law.[12] Somalia's domestic ratification has finished, but it has not deposited the instrument of ratification with the United Nations.[3]

The former states Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were parties to the treaty until they ceased to exist. All successor states (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, and Slovakia) made declarations of succession to the treaty and currently apply it.[20]

Canada became a signatory to the Convention on 28 May 1990[21] and ratified in 1991.[22] Prior to ratifying the treaty, Canada's laws were either largely or entirely in conformity with the treaty. Youth criminal laws in Canada underwent major changes resulting in the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) which went into effect on 1 April 2003. The Act specifically references Canada's different commitments under the Convention.

In India there is law that children under the age of 18 should not work, but there is no outright ban on child labor, and the practice is generally permitted in most industries except those deemed "hazardous".[citation needed] Although a law in October 2006 banned child labor in hotels, restaurants, and as domestic servants, there continues to be high demand for children as hired help in the home. Current estimates as to the number of child laborers in the country range from the government's conservative estimate of 12 million children under 13 years of age to the much higher estimates of children's rights activists, which hover around 60 million.[citation needed] Little is being done to address the problem since the economy is booming and the nuclear family is spreading, thereby increasing demand for child laborers. In India many people are still suffering from non-nutritious food, many parents are still leaving their children on riverside, in trains etc. Under the auspices of the Unicef financed Odisha initiative the Government of India is specifying the outline of a means of change and improvement in child care, and many trusts such as childLine, Plan India and savethechildren too are taking efforts to outdate child labour from India.[23] A few of the organisations who work with children's rights in India are Plan India, CRY (Child Rights and You), Save the Children, Bal Vikas Dhara-New Delhi, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, CHORD-Hyderabad.

Iran has adhered to the convention since 1991 and ratified it in the Parliament in 1994. Upon ratification, Iran made the following reservation: "If the text of the Convention is or becomes incompatible with the domestic laws and Islamic standards at any time or in any case, the Government of the Islamic Republic shall not abide by it."[24] Iran has also signed the both optional protocols which relate to the special protection of children against involvement in armed conflict and the sale of children and sexual exploitation.[25]

Although Iran is a state party to the Convention, international human rights organisations[26][27] and foreign governments[28] routinely denounced executions of Iranian child offenders as a violation of the treaty. But on 10 February 2012, Iran's parliament changed the controversial law of executing juveniles. In the new law, the age of 18 (solar year) would be for both genders considered the cut-off for adulthood and offenders under this age will be sentenced under a separate law.[29][30] Based on the previous Islamic law, which was revised, girls at the age of 9 and boys at 15 (lunar year, 11 days shorter than a solar year) were fully responsible for their crimes.[29]

Ireland signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 30 September 1990 and ratified it, without reservation, on 28 September 1992.[31] In response to criticisms expressed in the 1998 review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, the Irish government established the office of Ombudsman for Children and drew up a national children's strategy. In 2006, following concerns expressed by the committee that the wording of the Irish Constitution does not allow the State to intervene in cases of abuse other than in very exceptional cases, the Irish government undertook to amend the constitution to make a more explicit commitment to children's rights.[32]

Israel ratified the Convention in 1991. In 2010, UNICEF criticized Israel for its failure to create a government-appointed commission on children's rights or to adopt a national children's rights strategy or program in order to implement various Israeli laws addressing children's rights. The report criticizes Israel for holding that the Convention does not apply in the West Bank and for defining as Palestinians under the age of 16 in the occupied territories as children, even though Israeli law defines a child as being under 18, in line with the Convention. A contemporaneous report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that Israel's investment in children is below the international average and the actual investment had fallen between 1995 and 2006.[33] In 2012, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child criticized Israel for its bombing attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stating, "Destruction of homes and damage to schools, streets and other public facilities gravely affect children" and called them "gross violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict and international humanitarian law." It also criticized Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza on southern Israel which traumatized Israeli children, calling on all parties to protect children.[34]

New Zealand ratified the Convention on 6 April 1993 with reservations concerning the right to distinguish between persons according to the nature of their authority to be in New Zealand, the need for legislative action on economic exploitation—which it argued was adequately protected by existing law, and the provisions for the separation of juvenile offenders from adult offenders.[35]

In 1994, the Court of Appeal of New Zealand dismissed the suggestion that the Minister for Immigration and his department were at liberty to ignore the convention, arguing that this would imply that the country's adherence was "at least partly window-dressing".[36]

Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention in 1996, with a reservation "with respect to all such articles as are in conflict with the provisions of Islamic law"[1] and considers it to be a valid source of domestic law. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, which reviewed Saudi Arabia's treatment of children under the Convention in January 2005, strongly condemned the government for its practice of imposing the death penalty on juveniles, calling it "a serious violation of the fundamental rights". The committee said it was "deeply alarmed" over the discretionary power judges hold to treat juveniles as adults: In its 2004 report the Saudi Arabian government had stated that it "never imposes capital punishment on persons ... below the age of 18". The government delegation later acknowledged that a judge could impose the death penalty whenever he decided that the convicted person had reached his or her majority, regardless of the person's actual age at the time of the crime or at the time of the scheduled execution.[39]

The United Kingdom ratified the Convention on 16 December 1991, with several declarations and reservations,[40] and made its first report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in January 1995. Concerns raised by the Committee included the growth in child poverty and inequality, the extent of violence towards children, the use of custody for young offenders, the low age of criminal responsibility, and the lack of opportunities for children and young people to express views.[41] The 2002 report of the Committee expressed similar concerns, including the welfare of children in custody, unequal treatment of asylum seekers, and the negative impact of poverty on children's rights. In September 2008, the UK government decided to withdraw its reservations and agree to the Convention in these respects.[42][43]

The 2002 report's criticism of the legal defence of "reasonable chastisement" of children by parents, which the Committee described as "a serious violation of the dignity of the child",[44] was rejected by the UK Government. The Minister for Children, Young People and Families commented that while fewer parents are using smacking as a form of discipline, the majority said they would not support a ban.[45]

In evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Committee was criticised by the Family Education Trust for "adopting radical interpretations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in its pursuit of an agenda".[46] The Joint Committee's report recommended that "the time has come for the Government to act upon the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child concerning the corporal punishment of children and the incompatibility of the defence of reasonable chastisement with its obligations under the Convention."[47] The UK Government responded that "the use of physical punishment is a matter for individual parents to decide".[48]

The United States government played an active role in the drafting of the Convention and signed it on 16 February 1995, but has not ratified it. The Convention is unlikely to be ratified in the near future because it forbids both the death penalty and life imprisonment for children (Article 37),[1] even though a state can legitimately ratify subject to reservations or interpretations. It has been claimed that American opposition to the Convention stems primarily from political and religious conservatives.[49] For example, the Heritage Foundation sees it as threatening national control over domestic policy[50] and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) argues that the CRC threatens homeschooling.[51] In 2005, a Supreme Court decision declared juvenile executions to be unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishment";[52][53][54] in 2012, the Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders.[55]

State laws regarding the practice of closed adoption may also require overhaul in light of the Convention's position that children have a right to identity from birth.

During his 2008 campaign for President, then-Senator Barack Obama described the failure to ratify the Convention as "embarrassing" and promised to review the issue.[56][57] The United States has signed and ratified two of the optional protocols to the Convention,[13][14] the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

Two optional protocols were adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 May 2000. The first, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, requires parties to ensure that children under the age of 18 are not recruited compulsorily into their armed forces, and calls on governments to do everything feasible to ensure that members of their armed forces who are under 18 years do not take part in hostilities. This protocol entered into force on 12 July 2002.[13] As of 28 February 2015, 159 states are party to the protocol and another 14 states have signed but not ratified it.[13]